Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Gazette Cartoon

Pretty good!

Leon Rodriguez is the Montgomery County Attorney who ordered a secret search of at least one County Council computer in order to find out if Council staffer Dr. Dana Beyer was communicating with activists (including us) and working on a piece of Council legislation using her office computer.

4 Comments:

"...The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research outfit, this week released a report on the impact of the stimulus (known officially as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA) that says exactly the opposite. This is not spin. Here's the relevant portion:

CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA. Those ranges are intended to encompass most economists' views and to reflect the uncertainty involved in such estimates.

What do Cantor, Palin, Beck and GOP chair Michael Steele not understand in those two sentences? The CBO is widely regarded as an authoritative source for such data. (Washington nearly comes to a standstill when a CBO cost-analysis of a health care bill is about to be unveiled.) In this instance, the CBO has issued a conclusion that is about as definitive as these things get: GDP is bigger and more people are working, thanks to the stimulus..."

"...The economy shed just 11,000 jobs in the month, the U.S. Labor Department announced Friday. It was the lowest job-loss total since December 2007, and the unemployment rate fell to 10% from 10.2% in October.

A Bloomberg News survey had forecast a drop of 100,000 jobs in November. The Labor Department revised the October figure to 111,000, down from the previously released 190,000 total, and September's number shrank to 139,000 lost jobs, compared to the initial report of 219,000. During the recession -- which may have ended in July -- the U.S. economy has lost a staggering 7.7 million jobs.

However, this stat comes with qualifiers and conditions, hence investors shouldn't start celebrating just yet. However, there's cause for cautious optimism. That's because the U.S. economy is turning the corner, and if the current trend continues, the country should begin seeing monthly job growth again in 2010, possibly as early as the first quarter.

In other hopeful glimmer, a separate unemployment gauge, which includes workers who can find only part-time work and discouraged workers, fell to 17.2% in November from 17.5% in October..."